The Marriage of William Ashe Part 62

"Send in my resignation by the next post--and d.a.m.n the fellow that did it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her--a fine formidable figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of thing--there's a darling."

"Would you d.a.m.n me?"

She smiled at him--with a tremor of the lip.

He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams are there--male and female--aren't they?--and we've got to put up with them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh, by-the-way"--he looked back at a letter in his hands--"mother says Polly Lyster will probably be here before we go--she seems to be touring around with her father."

"Charming prospect!" said Kitty. "Does mother expect me to chaperon her?"

Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the sofa, and walked up and down the room in a pa.s.sionate preoccupation. A tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.

William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before--a little, terror-stricken figure, pa.s.sing in a miserable abstraction through the intricate backways which took her home.

"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question of money," she said to herself, feverishly--"only a question of money!"

All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.

As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or twice she went half-way to the door--eagerly--with hand out-stretched--as though she expected a letter.

"No other English post to-night, Kitty!" said Ashe, at last, raising his head from the finely printed _Poetae Minores_ he had just purchased at Ongania's. "You don't mean to say you're not thankful!"

The evening arrived--clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it.

They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame d'Estrees' party.

Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cus.h.i.+ons of the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of Venice began to work.

City of rest!--as it seems to our modern senses--how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fas.h.i.+oning of Venice! The easy pa.s.sage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now s.h.i.+fting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the n.o.ble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the _lidi_ in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the purple intensity of the sky!--through each phase of the hours and the seasons, _rest_ is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain.

It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into William's arms, and he _must_ forgive her!--because she was so foolish and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing melancholy and charm.

At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their head the _barca_, which carried the musicians.

"You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrees, waving to them. "Shall we draw out and come to you?--or will you just join on where you are?"

For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats in the wake of the _barca_.

"Never mind us," said Kitty. "We'll tack on somehow."

And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrees seemed to be surrounded.

Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow pointing to the ca.n.a.l.

The _barca_ began to move, and the ma.s.s of gondolas followed. Round them, and behind them, other boats were pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, each with its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and lanterns--the yacht, indeed, of a German prince--shone in the mid-channel.

On they floated. Here were the hotels, with other illuminated boats in front of their steps, whence spoiled voices shouted, "Santa Lucia," till even Venice and the Grand Ca.n.a.l became a vulgarity and a weariness.

These were the "serenate publiche," common and commercial affairs, which the private serenata left behind in contempt, steering past their flaring lights for the dark waters of romance which lay beyond.

Suddenly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the ca.n.a.l, the noiseless flock of gondolas--dark, leaning figures impelling them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in the boats, a mult.i.tude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face visible; and in their midst the _barca_, temple of light and music, built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns, a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, s.h.i.+ning on the bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise, darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.

"Margaret! Look!"

Kitty caught her companion's arm in a mad delight.

Some one for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the guests of Venice was experimenting on the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of the ca.n.a.l. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute--and the whole vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-sh.e.l.ls, that make its b.u.t.tresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer saw naiads and bearded sea-G.o.ds in place of angels and saints, and must needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps, straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night.

Then the wild beams began to play on the ca.n.a.l, following the serenata, lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola, revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans who filled it, in a hard white flash.

"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Che faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure towards the _barca_ whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was suddenly lit up. The light pa.s.sed in a second, and while it lasted those in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in darkness. The black ma.s.s of boats floated on, soundless again, save for an occasional plash of water or the hoa.r.s.e cry of a gondolier--and in the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish--for which, whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she searched the ca.n.a.l in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she herself been seen--and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to the Grand Ca.n.a.l. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide coming from the lagoon.

Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his hosts--men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new kingdom--discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous, ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of by the world as one of the two or three men of the future--this was a new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors. .h.i.therto closed had opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.

For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official doc.u.ments and reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively ardor of battle. They were the children--the darlings--of his thoughts.

Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments and considerations that were running through his head died away. He stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand--eloquent at once of character and of physical weakness--which lay beside her. Her face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and ripples drew him to her--touched all the springs of tenderness.

It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand, brow, mouth--they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty.

There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of intelligence and mind.

And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.

Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently, for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston--of Princess Lieven fighting Guizot's battles--and sighed.

By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham, contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself.

There was something bewildering in such power--combined with such folly.

In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.

Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make her happy--and yet carry on himself the life of high office--there was the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had married a political sceptic--and that it was hard for her to know what to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.

Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad part of the Parliamentary season--and then, perhaps, lure her into the country, with the rebuilding and refurnis.h.i.+ng of Haggart. She must be managed and kept from harm--and afterwards indulged and spoiled and _feted_ to her heart's content.